Learning Block

 
I rocked up to Ultimo TAFE last Thursday to enrol in the second semester of the retail combined baking and cake course. It seems that history is cursed to repeat itself. Exactly as my attempted enrolment in first semester went, I was placed on the waiting list again. Apparently only the first 15 people to pay are guaranteed a spot. I'm so disappointed. I wish the faculty had told me that when I called them asking about the course 6 months ago. I would have camped outside E block and hidden all the public signs pointing to the enrolment room until my paperwork had been completed.

To date, my pastry experience has been fairly limited so I'm pretty pleased with what I've managed to learn so far through reading blogs, cookbooks and magazines. It didn't hurt that I spent a few short months working in the Aria pastry kitchen making macarons, bombe alaskas, jellies and chocolate truffles but I was probably too young to fully appreciate the situation.

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Humility, knowledge and pride in one's work all take time to develop and despite desperately wanting to have that amassed knowledge and understanding of everything now I'm very well aware that it will take years if not decades to be what I want to become.

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With a little hard work and persistence, I've managed to complete half of my 2 year Science of Baking course in just over 3 months. I decided to buy the TAFE baking training book anyway, despite missing out on enrolment. Hopefully in another 3 months I'll have put theoretical lessons of the Science of Baking behind me and be moving onto learning the more practical and hands-on-get-in-there-and-get-dirty-isn't-this-just-AWESOME! side of things.

Obviously I still have a long way to go..